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2000 316I E36 Lower ball joint, track rod end and AFM

3K views 2 replies 3 participants last post by  Sh0x 
#1 ·
Hi guys. I don’t normally work on BMW’s (in fact these days I try not to work on cars at all if I can help it) but my best mate asked for a favour after his car failed it’s MOT on offside ball joint and track rod end. I joined your forum for some info so thought it would only be polite to give something back. I had a copy of the Bentley service manual to hand.

Car is a 2000 E36 316i Compact with a 1.9 engine (M43 I think). 110k miles on the clock so plenty of seized parts…

Lower ball joint.

Jack up car and remove wheel – I used a trolley jack on the sills and placed an axle stand where the anti roll bar joints the chassis. I then replaced the trolley jack with the car jack from the boot and as an extra measure I put the wheel under the sill.

If you’re doing the track rod end later then douse the thread in WD40 now.

Disconnect the anti roll bar from the wishbone (control arm). To do this I used the trolley jack under the hub to take some of the pressure off the bushing. Two 13mm spanners did the trick.

Disconnect the track rod end. If you are not replacing this then I recommend the scissor type of ball joint tool as the fork type tends to damage the boot. This allowed me to turn the hub so that I could access the lower ball joint.

Disconnect lower ball joint. A scissor type tool won’t get in here and as this is going to be replaced I used a fork ball joint splitter and a lump hammer. It took a fair few swings but I managed it in the end. There isn’t enough space to completely remove the nut so I slackened it as much as possible and then removed it after I had split the joint.

Disconnect inner ball joint. This is the tricky one – you’ll need a 21mm spanner and socket (I had to buy these as I’ve never had to use a 21mm before). I was doing the drivers side. The nut was slackened using a spanner with access from the front. Then I switched to a very long extension bar and socket with access from the top (under the bonnet down the side of the engine). Now I wanted to use this joint again but using the scissor type of tool is impossible. To avoid damaging the joint I wedged the fork type splitter between the wishbone and the chassis immediately behind the ball joint. A few whacks with the lump hammer and it came free.

Disconnect the rear bushing – a couple of bolts and the wishbone came free.

The actual ball joint is pressed in so I looked on yell.com for Precision Engineers in the area. One had a press and was happy for me to use it (I bunged the guy a tenner). The press was an old fashioned swing arm and screw but the old one came out and the new one in quite easily.

Refitting is the reverse of removal, taking care to use new nylock nuts and putting thread lock on the bolts that hold the rear bushing.


I then moved to the track rod ends. I recommend changing both sides at the same time as you always need to get the tracking done and the price of the part is bugger all (I paid less than a tenner a side for good quality Delphi parts). These were very seized and the spanners kept slipping. I ended up using two high quality mole grips. The first was on the rod the pokes out the end of the steering rack the second on the track rod end. By allowing the first mole to spin and foul on the chassis I was able to concentrate all my strength on the second. It didn’t come out without a fight and I ended up heating it with a blow torch. When fitting the new ones I used copper grease on the threads.

I then took the car to the local garage to get the tracking done.

To do both track rod ends and the ball joint cost a total of £55 (including the press hire and tracking) – much cheaper than the £250 my mate was quoted!

However, driving to and from the tracking I noticed that the car was misfiring when you put foot on the accelerator. I’d put my foot down the car would misfire and hesitate and then it would shoot off. I asked my mate about this and he said it had been doing it for two years!! :jaw-dropping How he could drive it like this is beyond me.

I was servicing it at the same time so decided to do this first and see if it helped the misfiring. Oil, filters and plugs later and the problem was still there. It felt like an ignition problem to me but some research on the net pointed me to the mass air flow meter (AFM, MAF, etc). Once this was disconnected the car ran fine. As it was a hot wire type meter I tried cleaning it in a chemical bath but it did not work (I got the link to a good guide from this forum – cheers guys).

The cheapest Bosch part I could find was £120 (at online automotive – very good prices for quality parts). However, I took a punt on a copy part off ebay - £30 plus postage (search for “BMW air flow” and have your Bosch part number ready). It arrived the next day and actually looked well built. Five minutes saw it fitted and the problem cured.

My mate is now amazed at the power and economy!! :D
 
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